Intentions
by Ceres Wunderkind
Summary: Two years after the events of The Amber Spyglass, Will runs away to London. Why is he being pursued? Who is the mysterious girl who offers him shelter? What is the secret of The Grove? And just what are everyone's intentions?
1. Will; in London

_At Waterloo Station_

Will Parry stands on the concourse of Waterloo Station. He wears jeans, a sweatshirt and a pair of scuffed trainers and is holding two carrier bags full of clothes.  He is excited, fearful, aggressive, tense.

He walks out of the station and down to the river.  He uses an A-Z to find the way.  This is seen, and noted.

Will looks across the water.  This is London, for real.  This is where he will live from now on.

The city looks at Will and grins.  It eats kids like him for breakfast.

_In the café_

The skinny girl with the pale blue eyes and the stringy blond hair sits down next to Will in the all-night café.  Will stares at her.  'What do you want?'  He is a fast learner.  The city takes.  It rarely gives.

'All right, don't bite my head off.'

Will looks at her again.  In his mind he can see the track marks on her arms.  He knows they're there.

'I've got no money.'

'I don't want your money.'

'What do you want, then?'

'I want to talk to you.'

'What about?'

'Does there have to be an _about_?'

'Hoi,' shouts the man behind the counter, 'this ain't a bleedin' dog's home. Buy a tea or fuck off!'

The girl looks at Will.  He gets up and goes to the counter.  Ninety pence buys a cup of tea and a plastic-wrapped digestive biscuit.

'Thanks.'  The girl does not know whom she reminds the boy of.  She assumes he fancies her a bit, or maybe he thinks she has a floor he can borrow.

'I seen you.'

'So?'

'I seen you about.  What're you up to?'

'Nothing.  None of your business.'  He is dark, stocky, intense, wary and scared.  He has faced many hostile questions over the past few weeks.

'You got any stuff with you?'

'I don't deal.'

'I don't mean that.  I mean clothes, things like that.'

'In my locker.  Why do you want to know?'

'Christ, you're so bloody suspicious!'

'Slag like you, I got a right to be suspicious.'

'You're not from London, are you?'

'Yes I am.  Lived here all my life.'

'No you're not.  I can tell.  Anyone can tell.'

'So?'

'They can spot you a mile off.  You want to get your act together.  How long have you been here? Really?'  The girl's eyes are dilated, glittering.  She can't know the effect they have on the boy.

'Three weeks.  All right?'  Defensive.  Defiant.

'Where're you staying?'

'What is this? Fucking Spanish Inquisition?'

'You're sleeping rough, aren't you?'

'What's that to you?'  He strokes the cat that has wrapped itself around his left leg.

'I've got a floor you can use if you want.  You got a sleeping bag?'

'What are you?'  He stands up, banging against the grimy Formica-topped table.  'Salvation Bloody Army?'

'No.  Honest.  I'm just saying it's all right if you want to sleep on my floor.  It's not far.  What's your name?'

'Darren.'

'I'm Lizzie.  Come on.'

Will has two pounds sixty three in his pocket.  It is despairing January – cruel, cold and vicious.  He follows the girl out of the brightly-lit café.  A dark shadow follows them.

_In the flat_

Three weeks.  Long enough to learn the desperation of his position.  Long enough to be coarsened and scarred by fear, cold and rejection.  Not long enough to pick up any more than the basic rudiments of survival.  Will is not a born street kid.  He has only lasted this long because he knows how to be inconspicuous.  Sooner or later he will be noticed again.  This time he will not escape.

London – bleak, unfeeling early twenty-first century London.  The city tests its denizens.  Often to destruction.  Will must learn its ways, or be destroyed.

The beggars returned to London in the 1980s.

Be careful, Will.  Many street people keep a dog – as friend, guardian, warmth.  Will's cat-daemon is both more and less than this.  Without Kirjava, he would already have been dragged beneath the swirling, treacherous currents of the city.  She knows why he is following the girl through the sodium-lit streets to the west of Paddington station.  She cannot stop him, for she also feels the chill that penetrates his body.  Many more nights spent sleeping in doorways, and they will die of cold and starvation.

'You said it wasn't far.'

'No, it's not far now.'

The street they are walking down is lined with high, dark Victorian houses, long since broken up into warrens of studio flats and bedsits.  There is a good side of the street and a bad side.  The bad side backs onto the railway and its back rooms are harshly lit by the lights from the track and disturbed by the continual rumble of trains.  The girl's flat is on the top floor at the back of a house on the good side.  She leads Will up the steps over the basement area and lets him into the hallway.

Its floor is tiled in black and white patterns.  Once this was common in the better sort of house – now it is the signifier of a certain kind of city dwelling.  The walls are coved in cream gloss painted anaglypta wallpaper.  This, too, marks Lizzie's home as one of a type which is replicated throughout London.  A transient place.  An anonymous place.

Will follows her up the stairs.  Each landing has a timeswitch-operated lamp, which stays on just long enough for an active person to reach the next storey.  They ascend the staircase wrapped in a cocoon of yellow forty-watt light.

The house seems sordid and cheap to Will.  It smells of poverty and damp.  He does not know how much it costs to live in a place such as this.  If he thought about it, and if he considered just how quickly the fifty pounds he brought with him from home was used up, he would know that he could not afford the rent on even the smallest of London flats, and he might start to wonder where the girl got the money to pay for it.  And the habit he strongly suspects she has.

Will is too stupefied with hunger and cold to think about these things.

'Here we are, Darren.'

Lizzie clicks on the light.  The flat has four rooms; kitchen, bathroom, bedroom and lounge.  The front door opens directly into the lounge, which is newly decorated in cheap materials – garish blue vinyl wallpaper; yellow printed polyester curtains and flat-pack pine furniture.  There are a small portable television and a stereo on a bookshelf by the door, which is otherwise empty. It all looks comfortable enough to Will, whose own home in Winchester was supported by an army officer's widow's pension.  The girl tells him to sit down on the couch and puts on a CD of bright, manufactured, pop music.  Will winces inwardly.  There is a dormer window behind the couch, overlooking the gardens and the next row of houses to the south.  The walls slope in towards the ceiling.  This was once an attic room.

'Coffee?'

'Yes please.'

Lizzie goes into the kitchen and boils a kettle.  If Will had followed her into the kitchen he might have noticed that it, too, is recently and cheaply equipped.

The girl brings a tin tray out from the kitchen.  There are two mugs of instant coffee on it; one is labelled _World's Greatest Golfer_ and the other advertises the _Wall Street Journal_.  There is also a packet of Rich Tea biscuits, which Will devours.  The coffee is hot and sweet and has a swift reviving effect upon him.

The girl is sitting opposite him, in a white plastic garden chair.  Like him, she is dressed in street uniform of jeans, t-shirt, sweatshirt and trainers.  Her back is to the door.  A Charlie Chaplin poster looks mournfully down on them both.  It has been hastily fixed to the wall with Blu-Tak and is not quite level.

'You all right now?'

'Yes, thanks.'

'You looked shattered down there in the café.'

'I'm better now.'

Will!  This is all wrong!  Why has she taken you in?  Kirjava tries to reawaken Will's suspicions, that were so strong in the café.  She cannot fight the lure of warmth and food.  She cannot prevent him from looking at the girl.  Lizzie is disconcerted by the intensity of his stare, but she keeps herself composed.

'I got a few spare blankets and stuff.  You can sleep on the sofa.  Shower's in there.'  She points to a door.  Top-floor flats do not run to full-size bathrooms.

Will showers and dries himself on the towel he finds on the rail.  He is feeling sleepy, warm and safe.  He stretches out on the couch and Lizzie turns off the music and covers him with a duvet.  He does not notice that it is brand new, just that it is cosy and comforting.

Lizzie waits until she hears Will's breathing settle into a gentle snore.  Then she goes to the bedroom, takes her mobile phone from her pocket and flips it open.


	2. Mary; in Oxford

_In Oxford_

Mary Malone PhD is woken at 7:30 by the raucous clangour of the alarm clock.  She groans, switches on her bedside lamp, gets up, throws a dressing gown over her nightdress, and shuffles into the chilly kitchen to put the kettle on.  

She sits at the kitchen table, shivering, waiting for the kettle to boil.  Her flat is heated by electric storage radiators, which have charged up overnight.  The other rooms are warm – too warm – but the kitchen does not have a heater.  Later, when she returns home, the storage heaters will have cooled down.  The scientist in her rails against the manifest inefficiency of a system which heats the flat when she is out and requires the assistance of a supplementary electric fan heater when she is in.  However, she cannot afford to have the heating replaced and so must put up with it.

Clutching a mug of milky tea, she returns to her bedroom and gets ready to go out to work.  Work has not been easy to find, but she has a mortgage and council tax to pay.  She was deemed to have been dismissed from her previous job for gross misconduct and did not qualify for any state benefits.  Her savings were small and lasted for only a month or two.

She has learned what it means to be blacklisted.  Her job applications have been ignored, or have rarely passed the first interview stage.  One potential employer was impressed by her qualifications and evident ability, and invited her back to meet her future fellow workers.  This invitation was cancelled in a cold letter two days later.  She guesses that the employer was tipped off that she, Mary Malone PhD, is not sound.

She has never been part of the old boys network of interrelationships between the university and the ring of firms that feed off the expertise that it creates.  She has few contacts of her own.

She will never return to the Church.

Later, fortified with toast and tea, she wraps herself in an anorak and lets herself out of her front door.  Her bicycle is in its usual place behind the back door of the converted house in which she lives.  She takes the plastic sheeting off it and pushes it to the front gate.  Taking a precautionary look around, she sets off.

Oxford is a city of bicycles, but it is also full of cars, buses, vans and lorries.  Mary must keep her wits about her as she cycles to work.  If anybody notices her passing they assume that she is what she looks like – a lecturer, maybe, or a researcher.  In the University, perhaps, or in whatever they call the Polytechnic now that the old technical colleges have started terming themselves universities.  As if there could be more than one university in Oxford.

Mary navigates her way through Oxford's roaring morning traffic and reaches her place of work in good time.  She parks her bicycle, says a cheery hello to her colleagues, goes to her locker and puts away her anorak and handbag.  She takes out the white coat that is the uniform of her new job, puts it on, and walks over to her workstation.

She sits down at her terminal and logs in.  It is nine o'clock.  Soon the first customers will be coming in and another day's shift at the checkout in Sainsbury's will have begun.

Mary has been amazed by how little she resents her reduction in status.  The job is mindless, true, but it is also free from care.  There is a rhythm to the work which she enjoys.  She gains an unexpected satisfaction from performing her simple tasks well, knowing that such wider and deeper matters as once concerned her – the meaning of religion, her researches into dark matter, the finding and keeping of a lover – are behind her now.  She is liked by her co-workers in the supermarket and is known for her willing and cheerful approach to her job.    Naturally she had to conceal certain details of her background before she was taken on, but her supervisors are already marking her down for promotion.  They have noticed her intelligence and ability.  In the canteen at lunchtime she smiles and chats with the other checkout girls – they are all "girls" here.  They are planning a night in a club – would Mary like to come?  Yes, of course she would, though she secretly wonders how she will be able to afford to stand her friends a round of drinks at club prices.

The afternoon shift begins.  An endless stream of groceries passes before her.  She lifts them one by one past the scanner, alert for the harsh beep that signifies a mis-scan.  She prides herself on how well she uses the scanner and keeps a mental tally of her failures.  So do the computer systems in the company's back office.

Shoppers pass through the supermarket.  It is company policy that each customer should be greeted individually as they reach the checkout, but for Mary this is more a pleasure than a duty.  She already knows many of the regular customers, and they often prefer to use her checkout so that they can chat to her over the cornflakes, packets of detergent and oven-ready chickens.

It is dark when she leaves Sainsbury's at the end of her shift.  She cycles home in the January gloom, parks her bicycle in its usual place and wraps it up against the rain.  Opening the street door of her house she checks her mail on the table in the hallway.  Two brown envelopes and a crumpled Jiffy bag.  She pockets them and walks up the stairs to her first-floor flat.  Letting herself in, she dumps her things in the hall, makes herself another cup of tea in the kitchen and then settles down in front of the television news to read her post.

The brown envelopes are, respectively, a form rejection letter and an invitation to the opening of a new Audi dealership in Headington.  Mary cannot imagine why she was selected to receive this particular piece of junk mail.  She files the rejection letter with all the others and throws away the invitation to test drive a new Audi TT sports car.  Then she opens the Jiffy bag.  There is a note inside – and some other things.  The note is from somebody she believed she had lost touch with for ever.  She looks again at the items that have fallen from the bag and reads the note with growing disquiet.


	3. Elaine; in Winchester

_In Winchester_

The Parry family is watching an episode of _Dad's Army_ on the television.  Elaine Parry and her son Will are sitting on the sofa facing the fire, and her husband John Parry is in the armchair by the fireside.  From time to time he pokes the fire or shovels on a few more pieces of coal.

The episode is a repeat, of course.  The BBC stopped making _Dad's Army_ over twenty years ago.  Most of the actors who play the superannuated soldiers of the Warmington Home Guard have been dead for a long time.  This does not matter.  The script is affectionate and funny, and the characters are now so familiar and well liked that they have become part of the national consciousness.

"Ooooh, Captain Mainwaring!" mimics Will.  His mother smiles and his father, a military man himself, chuckles quietly.

When the programme finishes, Elaine goes into the kitchen to cook supper.  She sings to herself, _'Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Hitler, if you think we're on the run_,' as she puts the potatoes on to boil.  It will be lamb chops, mashed potatoes and peas tonight, with suet pudding and syrup to follow.

She looks into the sitting room from time to time.  Will and his father are huddled together on the floor over a pile of pieces of Meccano.  It appears that they are making a model tank, and that John is helping Will with the all-important details.  Elaine likes to see them enjoying themselves in a father-and-son sort of way.

In the kitchen, the chops are spluttering in the grill.  Elaine turns the gas down a little.  She knows that John hates them to be burnt.

The front doorbell rings.  'Who can this be, and at this time of night!' Elaine says, half to herself.  She wipes her hands on her apron and answers the door.  Two men are standing there, illuminated by the streetlights outside and the light from the hall.

'Mrs Parry?' says one of the men.

'Yes.'

'May we talk to you for a moment?'

'We're Church of England, you know.'

'No, Mrs Parry, we're not Mormons.  We'd like to talk to you about your son Will.'

'Oh, I'm afraid you'll have to speak to my husband.  He looks after all those sorts of things.  Will's not in trouble, is he?'

'No, Mrs Parry, but we would like to speak to you for a while.'

'I'm sorry, but I'm cooking supper at the moment.  If you'll just wait a minute, I'll get my husband.'

She shuts the door on the two men, and goes into the sitting room.  'John, there're two men at the door who want to talk to you.  I don't think they're from the camp.'

'All right, dear, I'll go.'  John Parry leaves Will to work out the details of the tank's turret by himself and goes to the front door.  Elaine returns to the kitchen stove.  She hears voices in the hall, and then the door shuts again.  John comes into the kitchen.  

'There's nothing wrong, is there?'

'No, dear.'  He kisses her on the cheek.  'Just some misunderstanding.  It wasn't Will they wanted to talk about, it was some other boy altogether.'

'Oh good.  Supper's ready, then.'

Will has laid three places on the dining table.  John Parry says grace, and they eat their supper.

Later, Elaine goes upstairs to her bedroom by herself.  John and Will are sitting at the dining-room table.  They will still be there in the morning when she comes down to give them their breakfast.  This is the way it has been every day for the past three weeks, in this bleak and lonely January. 


	4. Giancarlo, Lizzie and Will; in London

_In Crouch End_

Giancarlo Bellini knows that big boys don't cry.  This knowledge adds shame to his burden of despair as he sits weeping in the kitchen of his father's house in Crouch End. 

Upstairs, his father lies in bed.  He is dying.

Giancarlo dries his eyes on a paper towel and makes two cups of strong coffee.  He takes them upstairs to his father's bedroom and knocks on the door.  Not waiting for an answer, he takes the coffee in and hands a cup to his father.  

Giovanni Bellini is barely forty-five years old, but he looks like an old man of eighty.   His hands, once strong and brown, the hands of a working man, are now pale and their skin is paper-thin.  His face is ashen and pinched with age, his hair is prematurely grey.   Giancarlo hands the cup of coffee to his father and sits on the chair at the foot off the bed to watch him drink it.

There is a picture of the Holy Mother of God on the wall above the head of the bed.  Giancarlo cannot understand why Mary does not step down from the painting and lay her blessed healing hands upon his father.  He is a good man.  He works hard.  He hurts nobody.  He has suffered enough in his life (_Giancarlo can hardly remember his mother.  He knows nothing of the lump, the hospital waiting-rooms, the failed therapy – too late, too late – and the morphia-assisted death_), so why does he need to suffer now?

Giancarlo remembers the other times when his father seemed to be ill.  He would say 'Giancarlo, mio caro, I feel tired.  Let's go on holiday!' and they would put on their brightest clothes, pack their things, board a south-bound bus, and before they knew it, they would be in a beautiful city of white buildings, blue seas, green hills and brilliant sunshine.  They would spend all day on the beach, or in the shady olive groves, or strolling up and down the café-lined boulevards and, miraculously, his father would grow stronger and taller and happier with every passing hour.

This year it was different.  They packed their bags as usual, caught the bus as usual; but there was no holiday.  They returned to their home in the respectable north London suburb of Crouch End the same day that they left it.

That was the first time that Giancarlo had seen defeat in the eyes of Giovanni Bellini.  His father took to his bed a fortnight later and has not left his room since.

Big boys don't cry.  But what else can Giancarlo do?

_In the flat_

Lizzie has risen early.  Tiptoeing around the flat, knowing that if she wakes Darren he will ask her questions which she would rather not answer, she washes perfunctorily, dresses in the same clothes she wore the previous night, drinks half a pint of milk straight from the carton, scribbles a quick note to Darren, and slips quietly down the stairs and out of the front door into the street.

Later, Will is woken by the sun shining through the south-facing dormer window of Lizzie's flat.  He no longer possesses a watch, so he has no idea what time it is.  Acutely aware that the underclothes in which he slept are far from clean, he wraps the duvet around himself and half-walks, half-hops across the carpet to Lizzie's bedroom.  He knocks on the door, but there is no answer.  He opens it and discovers that the room is empty.  Remarkably so – there are few of the things that one might expect to find in a girl's bedroom.  No posters, no unruly pile of clothes, no cosmetics, no magazines, no plush toys.

Will closes the bedroom door, uses the bathroom, and goes into the kitchen. He finds bread, tea, coffee and cornflakes in the cupboards, and milk, butter and eggs in the refrigerator.  He opens the freezer and finds it full of ready meals; chicken tikka masala, prawn chow mein, cottage pie.  A breakfast of tea, cornflakes, two boiled eggs and buttered toast will do fine.

There is a microwave on the worktop, next to the breadbin.  It has a clock, which reads 10:14am.  So – he slept for nearly twelve hours.  Not surprising; the flat is warm and the couch is comfortable.  Will puts his breakfast on a tray, takes it into the lounge and sets it down on the melamine coffee table by the couch.  Only then does he see the note that Lizzie has left there:

_Darren,_

_I've got to go out for a while.  Back soon.  Help yourself from the kitchen.  There's washing powder in the cupboard under the sink (hint, hint!)_

_Lizzie x_

Will has learned some useful things on the streets of London.  One of them is never to turn down the chance of a wash.  He throws all his clothes into the washer-drier and sets it off.  He is now confined to the flat for at least two hours while his things go round in the machine.  Just as Lizzie intended.

Kirjava has been watching Will with increasing irritation.

Will, what are you doing?

'What does it look like?  I'm having breakfast.  I've got to eat, even if you haven't.'

We must get out of here.  This place is a trap!

'Don't be daft!  We can leave any time we like.  Soon as my stuff is dry.'

It's the girl, isn't it?

'What do you mean?'

You know what I mean.

'You mean, what she looks like.'

Yes

'Kir; I'm not stupid.  I know she's not Lyra.  She's too old for a start.  She must be at least twenty.  And I'm sure she's a junkie.  Lyra would never do anything like that.'

You can't help yourself, though, can you?

'Help what?'

I saw how you looked at her.

'And?'

Will – I know what you're thinking…

'Of course you do.'

…But I'm going to say it anyway.  You're thinking that, if Lyra's world and our world are so similar, then there must be plenty of things in common between them.

'Yes.'

People.  You think that if towns and buildings can be the same, then why not people?  You're thinking that there must be a Lyra in this world too.  Not _our_ Lyra, but _a_ Lyra.  And you're wondering if this girl – Lizzie – is her.  And if she is, perhaps it can be a little bit like it was before.  Between you and her.

'All right, Kir.  That's enough!  Yes, of course that's what I'm thinking!'  Will puts down his toast.  'And why not?  Give me one good reason why not!'

Kirjava gives Will the good reason why not.  Will is stunned into silence.


	5. Mary; in transit

_In transit_

Mary Malone catches the number 310 bus for Winchester at three o'clock.  She takes a seat half-way back on the right hand side.  The scientist in her knows that this will give her the smoothest possible ride.

The bus (actually, it is called a _coach_, in an attempt to hearken back to the golden age of stagecoaches and posthorns.  In practice, this means upholstered seats with high backs) grinds out of Gloucester Green coach station and heads for the Oxford ring road and the A34 dual carriageway south.  It left Bradford at quarter past seven this morning and, although it is not exactly filthy, an undergrowth of discarded food wrappers and newspapers has accumulated beneath the seats and in the aisle.

Mary has the seat to herself.  On the other side, a young couple are wrapped in each other's arms.  Some lines from an old song pass through Mary's head:

_"Cathy, I'm lost," I said,_

_Though I knew she was sleeping._

_"I'm empty and aching, and I don't know why."*_

She smiles to herself.  Perhaps the song had some special significance to her, once upon a time.

The bus feels like a fairground ride as it follows the A34 in its swoops and dives over the undulating West Berkshire Downs.  Mary keeps an eye on her bag, which is wedged into the rack over the seat opposite.

She has told her supervisor at Sainsbury's that her aunt Siobhan in Clonmel has been taken sick, and she must go to her.  Mary is a good employee, so she has been granted a week's unpaid leave.  As the bus pulls into Newbury, her mind goes back over the note and the package that she received yesterday:

_Dear Mary,_

_I know we swore we'd never speak to each other again, but this is desperate.  I need your help badly._

_The men have come back.  I think they're the same men who came before.  I can't be sure.  They're scaring my mother._

_I've run away.  I'm not saying where._

_Mary, Mrs Cooper my old piano teacher died last year.  I've nobody else to ask.  When I phone home, nobody answers.  Please can you go to Winchester and make sure that mum is alright._

_I've put the front door key in this bag.  You know what the other things are.  Please keep them safe._

_Please help.  I'm relying on you.  Please._

_Will_

Mary remembers the last time she saw Will; after that final argument.  It was the same argument as ever, of course.

The Knife.  It had come between them, as she might have known it would.  She could see, she could feel, Will's anguish and misery.  She wished that she could help him.  But she knew, with a conviction that matched Will's determination, that she would not, could not, help him to re-forge the Subtle Knife.  They had argued endlessly over it.  Will had an endless list of good reasons why the Knife should be made whole once more.  Great, humanitarian reasons; well-intended.  Think of the good that he could do with it!

But behind all the reasons that Will put to her, she knew that there was but one, overriding, reason.  And although Mary knew that she was the unwitting catalyst that had ignited Will and Lyra's love, she also knew that the cost of reuniting them would always be too great. So she denied him, though it broke her heart.  She left his house that August evening with his angry voice still sounding in her ears: 'Go away!  Fuck off, you old cow! Go on, get lost!'  She had never heard him swear before.  His mother stood behind him at the door, shaking her head, terrified by this outburst of passion in her son.

And now Will has given it to her.  The shards of the Subtle Knife are packed in her bag, still in the Jiffy bag that Will sent her from London – for she has read the postmark – together with a change of clothing.

She cannot imagine why she has brought them with her.

The bus drops her off at twenty minutes past four by the statue of King Alfred in the centre of Winchester, not far from the cathedral.  It is already twilight, this grey January day, and by the time she reaches Will's house the street lights are on.  Mary braces herself inwardly, and opens the front door with the key that Will has sent to her.  She has feared that she will be met by a terrible faecal stench as she enters the hall; or that she will find Elaine Parry's dead body in the kitchen.  But the house is warm and only a little musty, although she has to press hard on the door to push aside the pile of letters, junk mail and copies of the _Daily Telegraph_ that have built up behind it.

'Mrs Parry?  Elaine?' she calls.  There is no answer.  Mary turns on the hall light.  The house is tidy but has clearly not been dusted or vacuumed recently.  There is nobody in the dining-room or kitchen, so she looks in the sitting-room.

Elaine Parry is there on the sofa, facing the fire.  She is shockingly emaciated.  She reminds Mary of the pictures that the missionary nuns brought back from Africa, when she was a nun herself.  Mary guesses that she has had nothing to eat for several days, maybe weeks.  A teapot and cup are on the table beside her.  They are free from mould, so Mary supposes that Elaine has been keeping herself alive on cups of tea.  She saw no milk bottles at the front of the house.  The milkman must deliver to the side door.  

Mary sits on the sofa next to Elaine.  She speaks softly to her, aware that she is very weak.  Had the gas central heating not been working, the scientist inside Mary says, Elaine would have died of hypothermia by now.

'Elaine, it's Mary.  Are you all right?'

'John?  Will?  Is that you?  Quickly, _Thunderbirds_ will be on soon!  You don't want to miss it!'  Elaine's voice is scarcely audible.

First things first.  Mary goes to the kitchen and switches on the kettle.  Then she dials 999.  The emergency services promise that they will get an ambulance to her within half an hour.  Mary has only just made the tea, when there is a ring at the door.  The ambulance has been even quicker than promised.  Mary helps the paramedics carry Elaine to the ambulance.  She notices that it has come from a private hospital.  Privatisation, indeed!  Can't the National Health Service even manage to provide a decent ambulance service any more?  Why must everything be outsourced; sold off to the highest bidder?  Mary gets into the back of the ambulance with Elaine, bag in hand.  She will accompany her to hospital.  Elaine will need a friend there.

Ten minutes later, the ambulance from the Royal Hampshire County Hospital arrives at the door of Elaine Parry's house.  The driver knocks at the door, but there is no answer.  He calls through the letterbox.  No reply.  Oh well, he has other calls to make tonight.  He will report this hoax call to his supervisor.  Mrs Parry will get a stiff letter and maybe a court summons.  People should know better than to go around wasting the time of the already overstretched ambulance service.

Mary holds Elaine Parry's hand as the private ambulance threads its way through the housing estate and onto the main road out of Winchester.

*_America_, by Paul Simon.  Quoted without permission.


	6. Mary and Elaine; in The Grove

_In The Grove, near Alton, Hants_

Mary Malone is beginning to feel uneasy.  The ambulance journey has taken a long time – over twenty minutes already – and surely it should have reached the hospital by now?  She is just about to ask the driver how much longer it will be before they arrive, when the ambulance leaves the main road and stops outside a set of wrought-iron gates.  The driver speaks into his radio, and the gates open.

They proceed up a long gravel drive which leads to the front of a large house.  The ambulance does not stop there, but follows the drive round to the back of the building.  Efficient-looking white-coated personnel open the rear doors of the ambulance, gently lift Elaine Parry onto a trolley, and wheel her in.  Mary picks up her bag and follows her.

Mrs Parry is whisked away down a gleaming tiled corridor and into a private room.  Its door is closed to Mary, who looks around for someone to speak to.  She does not have to look long.  A business-like young woman in a blue coat strides briskly up to her.

'Are you Mary Malone?  The lady who called the ambulance?'

'Yes, I am.  Is there somewhere I can sit while Mrs Parry is looked after?  A waiting room, or something?'

'Oh, we can do better than that.  We have a room ready for you, if you would like to follow me.'  The young woman leads her down the corridor and into a side passage.  She opens a door.  

'Here you are.  Settle in, and give us a call when you're ready.  Doctor James would like to have a chat with you.'

Mary enters the room.  It is not particularly large, but it makes up for this in the quality of its furnishings, which are rich and elaborate.  A tray, with a pot of freshly made tea, cups and milk, is waiting for her on the table.  She uses the bathroom and notices that there are expensive soaps and toiletries on the shelf under the mirror, and that the bathtub and hand basin appear to be made of solid marble.  She has a cup of tea.  It is delicious and refreshing.  This is like no hospital she has ever been in before.  

Full of curiosity, she picks up the telephone to call the front desk.

'Hello, this is Mary Malone.'

'Oh yes,' says the disembodied voice at the other end of the line.  'Someone will be with you in a moment.'  Mary prepares herself for a long wait, but it is only thirty seconds before there is a discreet knock on the door.

It is another young woman, who leads her into what she presumes is the entrance hall of the house.  It is spacious and grand, wood-panelled, with chesterfield sofas and coffee tables, and a crackling fire.  There are a number of people there, all wearing identical white towelling dressing-gowns.  Mary is sure that she recognises one of them from somewhere, an exquisite young man with blond hair and distinctive cheekbones.

'Please take a seat.  Doctor James will be with you in a moment.'  The young woman gestures towards one of the sofas.  Mary sits and waits.  Again, she does not have to wait very long.

Doctor James walks up to her.  He is middle-aged, grey-haired and smiling. He extends a hand to Mary.

'Good evening, Doctor Malone.  Let's go into my office, shall we?'

They pass through a thick mahogany door into a room, which is equipped with a large desk and two comfortable armchairs.  The walls are lined with medical textbooks and there is a personal computer in the corner.  The carpet is soft and deep, the lighting subtle and free from glare.  Doctor James offers Mary a seat and waits until she is settled before sitting down himself behind the desk.

'First indications,' he begins, 'are that Mrs Parry is going to be all right.  She is undernourished and she will need a certain amount of TLC, but I have absolutely no worries about her.  No worries at all.'  He smiles again.

'Doctor Malone. You called me _Doctor_ Malone out there.  How did you know I was a doctor? I haven't told you that.'

'Doctor Malone, we know a great many things about you.  For example; that you have a PhD in physics.'

Mary looks around the room.  It is a beautifully furnished trap, and it has caught her.

'Let me tell you a little about this place.'  Doctor James sits back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head, perfectly at ease.  'It was built in the mid-eighteenth century by the Wadworth family, whose country seat it was for nearly two hundred years.  Following the Second World War, and the introduction of crippling death duties by the incoming Labour government, it was sold and became a private school.  The school did well for a few years, and then badly for many more until it was, in its turn, sold to its present owners, who converted it to a hospital.

'Doctor Malone, The Grove caters for a very particular clientele.  Our residents are wealthy, or well-connected, or both.  They have health problems which need to be attended to in a discreet manner.'

Mary nods.  Now she remembers the film in which she saw the fair-haired young man with the chiselled features.

'Security and discretion are our watchwords.  We permit no unauthorised access to our grounds.  All our perimeters are closely watched at all times, by closed-circuit television and regular dog patrols.  I am sure you understand.'  Mary understands completely.

There is a knock on the door, and the blue-coated young woman enters.  She whispers in Doctor James' ear.  He flushes darkly, and hisses instructions to her.  She steps behind Mary's chair, throws her left arm around Mary's neck and pulls her head back until the vertebrae crack.  Mary cries out aloud in pain.

'Doctor Malone, please forgive me.  I hope we shall not incommode you for very long.  In your baggage you had the pieces of an article that was not your property.  We have taken them back.'

The Knife!

'Unfortunately, we do not seem to be able to find all the pieces of this article.  One important section is missing.  This young lady will now allow you to tell me where it is.'  The woman relaxes her hold on Mary a little.

Mary is genuinely surprised.  She had not checked that _all_ the shards of the Knife were in the package.

'I don't know!  Honestly, I never looked!'

Doctor James nods.  The young woman pulls Mary's head back again.  She screams.

'Doctor Malone, you are only a few millimetres away from total paralysis.  If you do not answer my questions truthfully, you will leave my office on a stretcher; a quadriplegic.'  He leans forward over the desk.  'Now – where is the rest of the Knife?'

Again, the young woman relaxes her grip a fraction.

'I don't know!  I really, really don't know!'  Doctor James looks closely at Mary's face.  He gestures to the young woman, who releases Mary and continues to stand behind her.

'For now, Doctor Malone, I am inclined to believe you.  We will continue to detain you and Mrs Parry, however.  It may be that we will need to return to this line of questioning.  You might like to consider that we could also bring Mrs Parry in here to assist you with your answers.'

Mary Malone stares at Doctor James.  'You bastard.  You utter fucking bastard.' 

'That is enough.  You may return to your room now.'

Mary is escorted out of the office by the efficient blue-coated young woman.  Doctor James picks up the phone and dials a London number.


	7. Giancarlo, Lizzie, Henry and Will; in Lo...

_In Crouch End_

Giancarlo kneels before the image of the Holy Virgin which hangs on the wall in his bedroom, as it does in his father's.  He crosses himself.

'Holy Mary, Mother of God, hear my prayer.'

He prays as he has done every morning and night since his father took to his bed.  He prays for his father to be made well, for the good times to come back, for happiness.

It is a selfish prayer, mostly, and Giancarlo has been taught that selfish prayers are seldom answered.  He has no great hope that this one will be, either.  He finishes, crosses himself again, and rises to his feet, ready to go downstairs to the kitchen and prepare his father's supper.  Turning to the door, he suddenly freezes, amazed at the unexpected success of his orisons.  A misty golden radiance is filling the space between himself and the bedroom door – a radiance in the form of a winged man.

It speaks to him, and its voice is both near and distant, loud and soft, real and imaginary.  It tells him what he must do, if he wishes his father to be saved.

_On the Underground and in Holland Park_

It is only ten minutes' walk from the flat to Paddington Station.  Lizzie passes through the busy concourse and into the Underground station, where she buys a Zone 1 return ticket.  She walks down a short flight of steps to the Circle and District Line platform where, after a ten-minute wait, she takes a Circle Line train two stops anticlockwise.

The rush hour is just about over now and the train is far from being full.  Nevertheless, it is noticeable that the other passengers in the carriage prefer not to sit close to her, if it can be avoided.  Her taut, sallow skin and thin body say _addict_ to the streetwise, of which there are many in London.

Lizzie leaves the train at Notting Hill Gate and takes the escalator down to the westbound Central Line platform.  She stands with her back bent against the concave tube station wall, waiting for the rush of wind that announces an approaching train.  'Not far now,' she says, partly to herself.

Fifteen minutes later she is standing outside the front door of her uncle's house in Holland Park.  It is a large house, covered in white stucco and, like many other houses in this well-heeled part of London, it has not been divided up into flats.  Her uncle is a very wealthy man.

Lizzie rings the doorbell and a servant answers.  'Good morning, Miss Elizabeth,' he says.  'You are expected in the library.'

'Thank you, Greaves,' Lizzie replies.  The servant stands aside, letting her into the hall, and closes the door behind her.  The servants like Miss Elizabeth.  She has exactly the right manner with them; self-confident, never rude, good-humoured, but not over-familiar.  It is in the breeding, so they say.  Her family has been rich and influential for many, many generations.

Lizzie crosses the hall and enters the library without knocking.  Her uncle is sitting in a large leather armchair by the fire, which has been recently lit and is burning with a smoky yellow flame.  'Good morning, Uncle Henry,' she says, and bends to kiss him on the cheek.  She takes another armchair on the other side of the fireplace, facing the old man.  A strand of fair hair trails across her face and she pushes it back behind her ear with her right hand.

'Thank you for coming over so quickly, my dear.'  Her uncle's voice is not strong.  He is frail, his once tall frame slumped in the armchair.  He could be any age from the mid-seventies to over ninety years old.

'Is the boy safe?'

'I left him in the flat, uncle.  I'm sure he'll stay there.  He's probably washing his clothes right now, so he won't be going anywhere for an hour or so.  Uncle Henry, may I…?' She gestures to her waist.

'No, my child.  I am expecting a visitor.'

'Oh, all right.'

'Lizzie, I want to thank you for your help last night.  We had to bring the boy in quickly, before we lost him again.'

'Why was it so urgent, all of a sudden?'

'I received a phone call yesterday evening, from The Grove.  The boy may have something of great importance to us.'

'I looked through his things, like you said.  There was nothing unusual there at all.'

'How much stuff does he have with him?'

'Nothing.  No bags or anything like that.  Just what he's wearing.'

'Nothing else?'  Henry looks disappointed.

'Wait – he said he had a locker.  It could be anywhere, though.'

Uncle Henry is silent for a while.

'Lizzie, I'm going to have to ask you to help us some more.  This is probably the most important thing you will ever do.'

'Yes, Uncle Henry.'  Ever the dutiful niece.

'Go back to the flat.  Make friends with the boy.  Suggest to him that you go out and get his things and bring them back to the flat.  Spend the afternoon around town.  Have fun; see a film, have something to eat.  Don't spend too much money – it'll make him suspicious.  Use cash, not credit cards.  Lizzie, did you notice anything odd about the boy when you picked him up last night?'

'No, not really.  Apart from his missing fingers, of course.'

'Was it difficult, persuading him to come with you?  Was he suspicious then?'

'Yes, a bit to start with.  But no, it was much easier than I thought it would be.'

'There are very good reasons for this, which I cannot tell you now.  Do you like the boy?  Did he tell you his name?'

'He said it was Darren.  And yes, I do like him, in a funny sort of way.  That hand of his is creepy, though.  I keep touching my own hand, just to make sure all the fingers are still there.'

'Yes, I understand. It is good that you like him; it will make your task easier.  His real name is not Darren, by the way, but it will be safer if you do not know what it actually is.

'Lizzie, I must say again how important it is that you do not let this – Darren – out of your sight.  Do whatever you must to recover his bags and keep him in the flat.  Now go.  The doctor will be here in a few minutes.'

'Yes, uncle.'  The interview is over.  'May I pop up to my room for a minute or two?  I need to pick up some things.'

'Yes, my child, you may.'

Lizzie climbs the stairs to her bedroom one at a time as she is feeling tired this morning.  She has lived in this house ever since her father's disappearance and presumed death nearly two years ago.  Like the rest of the house, her room is lavishly decorated and furnished, but it is also quite obviously a girl's room.  She locks the door behind her, takes a canvas holdall from the walk-in wardrobe and puts clothes, CDs and a couple of videos in it.  Then she lies on her bed and untucks her t-shirt from her waistband.

'Well, Parander,' she says.  'This _is_ exciting!'

_In the flat_

'What form does it take?' Will asks, when he can find the breath to speak.

Lizzie's daemon is serpent-formed.  She carries him coiled around her waist.

'Wait a minute, Kir.  I want to get my head around this.  You say she has a daemon – well, everyone here does.  They just aren't visible.  Like Mary's bird-formed one.'

Lizzie's daemon is not like Mary's.  It has a full, visible, physical presence.

'Then…'

Yes.  She is either from Lyra's world, or another world in which humans are accompanied by their daemons in full visible form.  I think it's very likely that she is from Lyra's world, though.  There are other, more subtle, signs which a daemon can see and a human cannot.  There's a kind of resonance.

'But that must mean that… that's there's a way!  A way to reach Lyra's world!  A way to reach Lyra!'


	8. Will and Lizzie; in London

_In the flat_

Will can hardly contain his impatience as he waits for Lizzie to return to the flat.  Kirjava advises caution.

You don't know if you can trust her yet.  Don't say anything.

'All right, all right.  Do you think she knows about you?'

I have not spoken to her daemon.  He is not aware of me.  If Lizzie has seen me, she'll have assumed I'm no more than an ordinary cat.'

'Good.  Kir, I can't wait!'

We must not give ourselves away.  We'll stick with her, and see what happens.  Will –  this can't be a coincidence, Lizzie offering you somewhere to stay.  There's something going on, I know it.

'Okay, you're right.  I'll be careful.'

When Lizzie gets back to the flat, it is half past twelve.  Will, fully clothed again, is watching the news and weather on the little portable television.  The news is dull political stuff.  As for the weather; today will be fine, but a cold front is moving in from the Atlantic and wet and stormy conditions can be expected over the next day or two.  There is a picture of an umbrella on the screen.

Lizzie is lively and animated.

'Come on Darren, can't sit about all day!  Let's go out!'

'It'll have to be somewhere cheap.  I'm skint.'

'Don't worry!  You can see me straight later.  Come on!'

'Okay.  Can we pick up my things while we're out?'

Lizzie can't believe it.  Is it really going to be this easy?

'Yes, of course.  Where are they?'

'YMCA, Tottenham Court Road.'

'No problem!'  And, each completely unaware of how much their different intentions are driving them together, they leave the flat and run down the stairs.

  __

_In the West End_

They stand in the street outside the front door.  'What shall we do first?' asks Lizzie.  'Get your stuff now, or pick it up on the way back?'

'It'll be a pain carrying two bags around all day.  Why don't we leave it till later?' replies Will.

So they have a nice cheap afternoon in the West End.  They get tube passes, and Lizzie pays.  They go into a cinema and see a romantic comedy.  Lizzie pays; after all, the film was her choice.

Will buys them two teas afterwards and that pretty much cleans him out.  He can't help noticing how little the cold bothers him, now that he has a warm place to go to and a new hope kindled in his heart.  Lizzie sees him looking at her.  She smiles back at Will.  He's a sweet boy when he smiles.  It softens the hard impression given by his jet-black eyebrows and jutting chin.  There's something in the way he looks at her…

Remembering her uncle's instructions not to spend too much money, Lizzie suggests that they go back to the flat and have something to eat there.  They look in on the YMCA, and Lizzie pays to get Will's carrier bags out of storage.  Then back to Paddington and a short walk to the flat.  It's been the best afternoon either of them has had in weeks.

_In the flat_

They return to the flat at half past seven.  Will dumps his bags by the couch, goes into the kitchen and opens the freezer door.  He looks at the packets and trays.

'What do you want, Lizzie?  Indian or Chinese?'

'The Mystic Orient calls!  Ohhhh – let's have lamb rogan josh!  There's some pilau rice on the bottom shelf.'

Will looks – yes, there they are.  And onion bhajias, too.

They eat their supper sitting side by side on the couch, watching the television.  They both feel warm, comfortable and happy.  Everything is going very well indeed.

At half past ten, Lizzie stands up and crosses the lounge to the bedroom door.  She turns to Will, smiles, and pushes her hair behind her ear in a gesture which goes straight to his heart.

'Darren, I don't say this to every boy I meet, but you're special.  Would you like to come to bed now?'

Will nods, wordlessly.  He follows Lizzie into the bedroom.

Later, Will talks to Kirjava in the bathroom.  He is incandescent with rage and frustration.

'Why?  Why the hell did you do that?'

You must not get involved with this girl.  It is dangerous.

'That was the most humiliating thing you could have done to me!'  _(Lizzie's back turned to him, disappointed.  The unused condom.)_

She could be carrying any one of a number of diseases.  You thought she was a drug user.

'She's not, though.  She's got no needle marks at all.  She had a condom.  It would have been all right.'

_She's not Lyra_.  And that is all Kirjava will say.

Will returns to Lizzie's bedroom and slips under the duvet.  Next to him, Lizzie is breathing gently, her daemon under the bed where she concealed him.  She, at least, is asleep.

Will is woken next morning by the sound of voices in the lounge.  Is it the television?  Possibly – Lizzie has left the bedroom.  Perhaps she has gone to make breakfast.  He puts on the dressing gown he finds on the back of the door and walks into the lounge.  

And stops dead in his tracks.

Lizzie is sitting, fully dressed, on the couch.  She is holding a tissue to her hand, which is bleeding profusely.  Next to her is an old man.  He looks up to Will and speaks:

'William Parry, good morning.  Please forgive my not getting up, but I am not well and the stairs were very steep.  Do let me introduce myself: my name is Henry Latrom.  You know my niece Elizabeth quite well already, I believe.'

Will is dumbstruck.

'William, please sit down.  It is most important that we talk.'


	9. Will, Lizzie and Henry; in London

_In the flat_

Will does as he is told.  He sits in the chair next to the Charlie Chaplin poster.

'Firstly, William,' says the old man in his whispery voice, 'I must tell you that I have one of my people stationed outside the door.  It is his task to ensure that we are not disturbed during our talk.  I should perhaps point out that he is not standing near the top of the stairs and that if you do attempt to leave before we finish it is much more likely that you will suffer a nasty, or even fatal, fall, than that he will.'

He strokes his mongoose-daemon, cradled in his lap.

'You see, we know a good deal about you.  I lost a good man once.  I don't intend to do so again.'

Will remembers the sickening crack the intruder's skull made when, two years ago, the men first came to his mother's house and he accidentally tripped one of them at the top of the stairs.  He tries to keep calm.

'You said your name was Henry Latrom.  Are you anything to do with Sir Charles Latrom?'

'He was my younger brother.  He disappeared two years ago, and we presume that he is dead.'

Will has never forgotten the hideously distorted face by the lake, in Mrs Coulter's camp.

'Yes, he's dead.  I saw his body.'  A thought strikes Will.

'Sorry, Lizzie.  Was Sir Charles your father?'

'No. Yes. Well – no, he wasn't my real father.  I was adopted, from an orphanage, when I was only a baby.  But I called him Father, and he treated me like a daughter.'  Lizzie gets up from the couch and stands behind it, looking out of the window.

'How did Charles die?'

'I don't know.  He was with that woman, Mrs Coulter.  There were Spectres, but I don't think it was them that killed him.'

Henry Latrom shakes his head, regretfully.  'We may talk more about Charles later, when…' And he indicates Lizzie.  She has her daemon Parander wrapped over her shoulders.  They are speaking softly to one another.

'Meanwhile – you've led us a merry dance, William, disappearing like this.  It's taken us a while to find you.  Now, I'm going to be completely honest with you…' He coughs convulsively.  Lizzie turns, red-eyed, from her place by the window.  'My tablets…' Henry croaks.

Lizzie takes a small dark bottle from the pocket of Henry's coat and gives her uncle two tablets, with a glass of water from the kitchen.  Henry is better after a few minutes.  Lizzie sits down next to him on the couch.

'William, I must tell you that we now possess the Knife.  All of it.'

Ah, yes.  Lizzie's cut hand. She must have found the Knife-point hidden in his bags.  And – Mary!  Will stands up and advances on the old man.

'Where's Mary?  What have you done with her!'

'William, please calm yourself.  Doctor Malone is with your mother.  They are both receiving the best possible care in a private hospital.'

'Have you hurt them?  I'll kill you right now if you've hurt them!'

'William, I must remind you that you left your mother all alone with nobody to help her for nearly three weeks.  She was starving and distressed when we found her.'

'You made me leave her.  Your men did!'

'You never let us speak to you.  If you had, a great deal of inconvenience and suffering could have been avoided.  Now, sit down!'

Will, chastened, does as he is told.  Again.  An implicit threat now hangs in the air.  These people have the Knife, Mary and his mother in their power.

'As I said, we have the Knife.  We know about its unique properties – that it can cut windows between the worlds.  We also know that you are the only person who can use it.  It is true that the Knife can have only one user at a time?'

'Yes, as far as I know.  But it's broken.  I couldn't get anyone to help me re-forge it.'

'Nor would you have.  The Knife cannot be remade in any ordinary fire.'

'But – it was broken before!  Iorek and I mended it!  It was only a wood fire that we had.  And besides…'

'Yes.'

'I promised not to use it.'

'Who did you make that promise to?'

Will can feel control slipping from him.  He has said more than he should, and yet – this man might help him repair the Knife.

'The angel Xaphania.'

'Quite so.  Do you think that it was a fair promise?'

'Yes. No.  I don't know.'

'Or do you think that it was extracted from you under duress?'

'Xaphania told me that every time the Knife was used to open a window, it created a Spectre.  I saw what _they_ do.'

'And?'

'She said that Dust was leaking from the worlds into the Void, along the Knife-cuts.  She said that the windows had to be closed, or else all the consciousness would drain out of the worlds.  I showed her how to close the windows, to stop it happening.'

'I see.'  Will feels more and more as if he is on trial.

'And yet, despite what she said, you have sought to re-make the Knife and, presumably, use it again.'

Will cannot help himself:  'It was so unfair!  Lyra and me… all we wanted was to be together all our lives.  We deserved it.  And Xaphania said that the angels could manage the Dust-loss.  It was only happening because the windows were being left open.  I wouldn't have done that.  And she said that the angels could take care of the Spectres.  Why couldn't we stay together, living in the worlds?'

'So you think the angel Xaphania was unjust, then.'

'Yes!  Yes, I do!'

'We think so too, William, but for a different reason.  Do you remember your father?'

'Yes, of course.'

'What did he die of?'

'A witch shot him, because… because he wouldn't sleep with her.  Because he was faithful to my mother.'

'Ah, yes.  But if the witch hadn't shot him?'

'He was sick.'

'Why was he sick?'  

Will remembers his father's last words to him; the reason why neither he nor Lyra could live in each other's worlds for very long.

'He was sick because his daemon had been too long away from her home world.'

'Yes.  Lizzie, you tell him.  I'm feeling tired.'

Lizzie looks up at Will.  She is Henry Latrom's most effective argument.  The boy is nearly theirs, now.

'Darren, you showed the angels how to close the windows.'

'Yes.'

'They did close them.  But Darr… William, I mean, they didn't wait for travellers like us to return to our home worlds _before_ they closed them.  We're stranded here, in this world.  We can't go home, unless you help us.

'We're going to _die_ here; me, my uncle and all the rest of us.  Quite soon now. William, you're our only hope.  Come with us.  Mend the Knife.  And, please, please, help us to go home.'

They have him.


	10. Will, Lizzie, Henry and Giancarlo; in tr...

_In the Mercedes_

Lizzie and Will take the back seats in Henry Latrom's silver-grey Mercedes Benz 500SEL saloon car. Henry sits in the front and Greaves, who was waiting for them outside the door of the flat, drives.  Kirjava slips past them and merges into the shadows under the front seats.  She and Will talk. Nobody else can hear them, although from time to time Lizzie notices that Will's lips are moving involuntarily.

Will, this is all wrong.  You know it's wrong.

'No I don't.'

Do you believe these people?

'Yes, why not?  It all makes perfectly good sense.'

You _want_ to believe them.  You want an excuse to use the Knife.

'It's not an excuse.  They're right – the angels messed everything up.  I'm going to put that right.'

Is that the only reason?

'It doesn't matter.  It's a good enough reason for me.  Now shut it, Kir.  I've had it up to here with you.'

They fall silent.  The Mercedes is swift, smooth and powerful, and Greaves is an expert driver.  They make good time through the London traffic and are soon westbound on the M3 motorway, heading for Alton.  

_Waterloo Station_

Giancarlo has listened carefully to everything the angel has told him to do.  He has taken thirty pounds from under the loose floorboard in the spare bedroom.  He has put food and water aside for his father and told him that he will be back soon.  Then he has taken the tube to Waterloo Station and bought a return ticket to Salisbury.  It costs little more than a single fare, and he has always been a careful boy when it comes to money.

_In The Grove, near Alton, Hants_

Mary has not been confined to her room, as she had expected.  Instead, she has been given free use of the facilities in The Grove, on the explicit understanding that she does not attempt to escape, or cause any form of disturbance that might upset the hospital's residents.  She has enjoyed a hot mud treatment, spent an hour on a sunbed and had her stiff neck massaged.  'After all,' she says to herself pragmatically, 'I may as well get _something_ out of this mess.'

They have allowed her to see Mrs Parry, too.  Will's mother is sitting in a chair next to her bed when Mary looks in on her room the morning after their capture, for, Mary as reminds herself, they are both prisoners.  She is still somewhat confused, but the nurses are making sure that she eats well and the doctor has prescribed a course of treatment that she is confident will help her.

Mary speaks comforting words to Elaine – yes, the hospital is very nice and the staff couldn't be more helpful.  She is sure that she will be allowed to go home soon.  No doubt her Will will be here this afternoon to see how she is getting on.

No doubt at all, she thinks.  She can tell that the people who own The Grove are very powerful people indeed.  She does not think that Will can escape their clutches for long.


	11. Will, Elaine, Henry, Lizzie and Mary; in...

_In The Grove, near Alton, Hants_

The Mercedes pulls up at the porticoed front entrance of The Grove, its wheels crunching on the gravel.  Greaves helps Henry Latrom from the car and supports him as they enter the hallway.

Doctor James greets them effusively. 'Mr Latrom, Elizabeth, this is a great pleasure, as always.  And this must be young Mr Parry.  You are all very welcome.'

Creep, says Kirjava.

The efficient young woman escorts Will to his mother's room, where he finds her and Mary watching the mid-morning news.  For Elaine's sake, Mary says nothing about the way they have been treated.  Will and his mother are overjoyed to see each other, so Mary leaves the room and spends an entertaining hour talking about the theatre with the gorgeous actor she saw the night before, while his companion, not used to being ignored, flounces off to the bar (vegetable juices only).  'That's the first and last time _I_ put a supermodel's nose out of joint,' thinks Mary, and smiles at the young man, who would like to play Hamlet at the Almeida Theatre in Islington next October.

Later, she speaks privately and urgently to Will.  'These are not good people.  They hurt me and they threatened to hurt your mother.'  She describes her treatment at the hands of the blue-coated young woman.

Will is outraged at what he hears, but there is a permanent overriding thought at the front of his mind.  The Knife!  These people have money and resources – he can see that.  They will repair the Knife for him – and then… Freedom!  Lyra!

He refuses to think about the hold that they have on him, or its nature.  Kirjava keeps her own counsel.

After a very good lunch, he is invited to join Henry and Lizzie in Doctor James's office.  He enters the book-lined room and his eyes are immediately drawn to the Knife, still broken, but assembled with all its fragments complete, on the desk before him.  He has assembled the Knife himself, many times, on his bedroom floor in Winchester.

'Mr Latrom, Lizzie, thanks for looking after my mother.'

'Is she happy here, William?'

'Yes.  I'm sorry, but Mary said they were a bit rough with her – Mary, I mean – last night.'  Will describes what was done to Mary in this office.

Henry Latrom frowns.  If Will knew Henry better, he would know that this signifies considerable anger in him.

'I will speak to Doctor James about it.  Thank you for telling me this, William.  Now, do you have any questions for me, or Elizabeth?'

Will thinks.

'Yes, I've got one or two.  First, is there a forge here?  Where are we going to fix the Knife?  I have to be there when it's done, you know.  I was before.'

Again, Will has said more than he meant to say.  He tells them all about Iorek Byrnison and the brush-wood fire that he used to mend the Knife in the mountains.

'I see.  And your other question?'

'Well, it's this.  You say you're close to dying, but it's only been two years since the angels began closing the windows.  Now, my father lived for ten years in your world, and he was able to hike across mountains, while you need help to walk.  I'm sorry, but why is this?'

'William, I can answer both questions.  In fact, as you will see, both questions have the same answer.

'You may remember that my late brother Charles took an interest in experimental theology – physics, as you know it – and was involved in Dark Matter research in this world and our own.  It was one of the ways in which we encouraged commerce between the worlds.  The Knife, as you know, is connected with Dust – or Dark Matter – and derives many of its properties from it.  Charles would talk to me about it at inordinate length, sometimes.'  Henry sighs.

'Did you ever wonder about the properties of the windows you opened with the Knife?'

'No, not really,' replies Will.

'There doesn't seem to be anything elaborate or complicated about them, does there?'

'No – they're just windows.  You walk through them, and you're somewhere else.'

'And yet, they perform the amazing feat of allowing you to pass from one world to another.  Think about it, William.  Each world has its own special properties – some worlds are populated, some are not.  In some worlds, humans have daemons – full, visible daemons with a physical presence – in others, they do not.  What about the Gallivespians?  Could such tiny creatures have been created in your world; or mine?  No – in our worlds, such small beings would not have large enough brains to function as humans.'

'But they _were_ human!'

'Yes, they were.  What I'm trying to get at, William, is this:  In all your travels between the worlds; you could live, eat, drink and breathe equally well in each one, couldn't you?'

'Yes, I suppose so.'

'But is that not incredibly unlikely?  The very composition of matter itself is different in each world.  Your body – and mine – should not be able to exist in an alien world.  And they could not – if it were not for the Knife, and the properties it grants to the windows it creates.

'When you pass through a Knife-created window, your body itself is changed in such a way as to make it compatible with the world that it has entered.  Your body changes, but your daemon, which is a metaphysical creature, does not.  That is why your body, to begin with, is unharmed by the transition from one world to another.  It is also the reason why your daemon begins to die the moment you enter a different world from the one in which she was born.

'That is the first point I wanted to make.  The window-changes are not symmetrical.  Your father's daemon, which only attained physical form in my world, had a lifespan of ten years when she moved from your world to mine.  But, due to the different properties of our worlds, my daemon, and Lizzie's, can only live two years at the most when they travel to yours.'

'I think I see what you mean,' says Will.  'Some people can live longer in some worlds than in others.'

'Yes, that is correct.  But they can only achieve their full natural lifespan in their own world.

'The second point concerns the Knife.  I have said that when you pass through a window, the properties of your body change to match the world you enter.  The same is true of the Knife.  When it was originally made by the philosophers of the Torre Degli Angeli, they employed a furnace which was, without their knowledge, powered by the decomposition of hydrogen atoms.  In another world, however, a simple charcoal fire created enough heat to allow it to be re-forged by the armoured bear Iorek Byrnison.

'In this world, no ordinary furnace can melt the metal of which the Knife is made.  It must be exposed to the powers of Heaven and Earth acting in concord.  There is a place not far from here where the Earth-Current and the Sky-Fires meet, and it is there that we must take the Knife tonight.

'Until then, enjoy the facilities of The Grove.  Lizzie will show you round.  You may see some people here whom you recognise – from films or newspapers, maybe.  They have come here for privacy.  Please respect it.'

Lizzie and Will leave Doctor James's office.  Henry Latrom sends the efficient blue-coated young woman to bring Doctor James to him.


	12. Will, Lizzie and Henry; in The Grove. Gi...

_In The Grove, near Alton, Hants_

If an architect were to measure all the rooms on the ground floor of The Grove and then attempt to draw a plan of the building based on her measurements, she would soon discover an apparent inconsistency.  There would appear to be a gap, or void, between Doctor James's office and the staff staircase.  Further investigation would reveal that one of the bookcases with which Doctor James's office is equipped may, if the spine of a certain volume pertaining to Egyptian antiquities is depressed, be made to rotate, allowing the inquisitive architect access to this empty space.

She might smile to herself upon making this discovery.  Doubtless the secret door leads to a private library, where one may peruse volumes of a particular kind, not suitable for ones wife, children or servants to see.

She would be wrong.  For two hundred years, this room has contained, if that is the right word, something far more interesting.  In fact, the house was built around this room, whose name appears upon first consideration to be self-contradictory, bearing in mind that it is completely surrounded by eighteenth-century brickwork.

The Window Room…  Henry Latrom sits in Doctor James's chair, waiting for him to appear.  At his back is the singular bookcase, through which, over the years, has passed the traffic that is the basis of the Latrom fortune for, notwithstanding Doctor James's intentionally deceptive account of the history of The Grove, it has in fact belonged to the same family for the past two hundred years.

Henry Latrom, like his predecessors over the centuries, is a pragmatic man.  He does not care what goods pass through his window, only that a reasonable profit should be derived from them.  Naturally, the window is not suitable for the passage of heavy, bulky, low-margin commodities, as it is not large enough.  No, the effects in which he prefers to trade across the worlds are small, but valuable.  For example, each world produces its own varieties of recreational narcotic, and there is a ready market for them on both sides of his window.  He has some wealthy customers who have a special taste in reading matter of an illustrated nature.  Henry does not care for this kind of material himself – he finds the adult figure more aesthetically pleasing – but he is more than happy to meet the demand for it.  Henry Latrom is a great believer in the free and unfettered operation of market forces.  Everything has its price – the marketplace has no morality – and so this truly pragmatic entrepreneur knows that if, for example, there is a body that needs to be disposed of in a completely untraceable manner, he can, for a consideration, assist.  If he does not take this business, somebody else surely will, and that would be a shame.

Spices and slaves, silks and jewellery, drugs and pornography.  They have all been grist to the Latrom mill.  But now the window, the foundation of his wealth, has been taken away from him.  Even more than the consequent threat to his life, he feels, like a physical assault, the risk to his business.  It has taken time and research, precious time and expensive research, to reach the point he is at now, with the Knife and its Bearer in his hands.  And this fool James has put it all at risk with his clumsiness.

Doctor James enters the room and, seeing that Henry has taken his own chair, sits down on the other side of the desk.  Greaves takes up his position by the door.  He is not a big man, nor a particularly intelligent one, but he is effective.  Very effective.

'You are a complete fucking cretin.'  Henry's parchment voice crackles in the air.  Doctor James stands up indignantly.  He has never heard Mr Latrom speak in this way before.

'Sit down.  You are a great disappointment to me.  When I chose you for this job I had no illusions about your intelligence, but I did not think that you were stupid.  

'Who told you that you could mistreat the woman Malone?  Or threaten Mrs Parry?  Do you not realise that we must have the boy's complete heartfelt cooperation in this matter?  If he believes that he is being coerced, he will not consent to open a new window for us.  Either we will lose both him and the Knife, or it will have no Bearer.  I, and many others, will die, but I can assure you, James, that I will see you dead before that happens.'

'But the girl?  Elizabeth…' Doctor James is sweating now.  

'She may not be enough.  In any case, I have had to tell the boy that I will deal with you.  You are dismissed from your post, with immediate effect.  Greaves will accompany you to one of our guest rooms now.  I will decide what to do with you later.  Get out of my sight!'

Doctor James is white-faced and shaking.  He offers no resistance to Greaves as he is escorted from the room which used to be his office.

'Greaves!'

'Sir?'

'When you have made Doctor James comfortable, would you please send Miss Morley to see me.'  The efficient blue-coated Miss Morley will make an excellent replacement for Doctor James.

Kirjava slinks from her hiding-place in the corner of the room and follows Greaves and Doctor James out into the hall.

Will and Lizzie are sitting together in the conservatory.  Outside, the January afternoon skies are grey, but it is warm and comfortable on the wickerwork sofa they are sharing.  They spoke little in the car, but Lizzie is naturally talkative.

'It's not uncommon, you know, people thinking I'm a junkie.  I don't normally look like this.'

'You mean, it's because you've been too long in this world.'

Lizzie looks around, but there is nobody near to overhear them.  'Yes, I do.  You should have seen me at the Hunt Ball at home!  I love riding, but if I had a fall now it'd kill me.'

Will, who has never ridden to hounds, smiles.  Lizzie's loss is his gain.  She resembles his Lyra far more in her present state than she would have if she had been completely well.  Soon they will be taking the Knife-shards to the place where they will be made whole once more, and he will be able to find the real Lyra.

He spots a face he recognises on the other side of the conservatory, by the window.  He indicates it to Lizzie.

'Hey, doesn't she sing with…'

'Shush!  Remember what Uncle Henry said!'  Lizzie squeezes his arm.  'And look.  Don't worry about last night.  It happens to everyone some time or another.'

'Not if they're girls, it doesn't.'

'You wouldn't want to swap.  Believe me.'

_In Salisbury_

Giancarlo pushes up his collar, turns and looks back at the railway station.  The bus stop should be somewhere nearby. Ah, here it is!   He joins the queue.  To the north and west, the storm-clouds are piling up over Salisbury Plain.


	13. Will, Lizzie and Henry; at Stonehenge

_In the Mercedes_

It is not far from Alton to Amesbury as the crow flies, but the roads are not direct.  As before, Henry Latrom sits in the front of the Mercedes, Greaves drives, and Will and Lizzie are in the back.  Also Kirjava, unknown to all but Will.

They reach Amesbury at five o'clock.  It is getting dark.

_In The Grove_

Mary to Elaine, in her room: 'Don't worry.  I'm sure they'll be back soon.'

'Oh yes.  Will's got his homework to do.   He's a good boy, but he must do his homework.  Are we going to watch _Neighbours_?  I like that.  And _Home And Away_.   They have such nice people in them.'

'Yes, of course.'  Mary looks away to hide the fear she is feeling inside herself and is sure is showing in her face.  She cannot help but think that Will is going into a place where he will have to face great dangers, both physical and moral.  If she were still a member of the Roman Catholic Church, she would pray for him.

_In the Mercedes_

Stonehenge stands a mile or so to the west of the village of Amesbury, at the junction of the A344 and A303 main roads.  In recent years it has been taken over by an organisation called English Heritage, which has been given the dual objectives of preserving the Stones, and making them profitable.  To that end it has put up a fence around the perimeter of the site and forbidden access to it, even to the pagan worshippers whose temple it is.  For the benefit of the visiting public, they have built a car park and a visitor centre, with turnstiles and a shop selling guidebooks and souvenirs.

Access to the Stones is normally barred to the general public when the visitor centre is closed, but Henry Latrom has connections and these rules do not apply to him.  Greaves parks the Mercedes near to the perimeter and stops the engine.  Henry turns round to speak to Will.  He is looking pale, and he is coughing – a rasping cough deep in his throat.

'Here we are, then.  This is the place where the Knife will be made anew.'  He breaks off, purple-faced.  Lizzie offers him two of his tablets.  He swallows them, and then asks her for two more.

'Uncle Henry, no!  The doctor said…'

'Damn the doctor!  Give me the pills!'  Lizzie knows that, if they return to their own world in time, her uncle will not be needing the pills any more.  And if they do not, then it will hardly matter; so she gives him the tablets.  Henry sits back and waits for the powerful drugs to take effect.

'We are here, William,' he says when he is feeling better, 'because this is one of the places where the forces of Earth and Sky converge.  There are others – Machu Picchu, Avebury, Tunguska, Glastonbury Tor, Uffington.  Stonehenge happens to be the most convenient for us and also, the weather conditions are, I think, favourable.'

'What have I got to do?'

'Take the Knife-shards and place them in the centre of the stone circle.  Put them as close to each other as you can.  Then return to the car.'

'Which way should the Knife point?'

'It doesn't matter.  Just make sure that all the pieces are in the correct positions and right up next to each other.'

Greaves hands Will the pieces of the Knife, wrapped in a cloth.  'Good luck,' says Lizzie and kisses him on the cheek.

Will gets out of the car and, ducking under the wire barrier, approaches the stone circle.  The sky above him is now almost completely dark, with only a glimmer of light to the west to show where the sun has been.  He finds the centre of the circle with some difficulty, but positions the pieces of the Knife as best he can.  The wind is getting up and, above him, storm clouds are gathering.

One of the ley-lines which mark the path of the Earth-Current passes directly under Stonehenge, approaching the surface of the earth at that point.  Coincidentally, the matrix of ethereal vortices which feed the fires of heaven is particularly well interconnected over Salisbury Plain, which is noted for its thunderstorms.  Where the sky and earth nodes meet, and when there is a sufficient difference in potential, then the conditions exist for a considerable current flow between them.

All it takes is a point of focus…

Will struggles back to the Mercedes, as the wind howls stronger and louder about him.  It catches the door of the car as he opens it and both he and Lizzie have to fight to shut it behind him as he scrambles back in.

'We must all stay in the car and keep calm,' says Henry.  'Great forces are about to be deployed around us, but the car will act as a cage of safety so long as we keep all the doors and windows fast closed.'

'Like a Faraday Cage?' asks Will, remembering his GCSE physics.

'Very like.'  And Henry is about to say more, when the sky is split by an eye-searing flash, followed two seconds later by a stunning crack of thunder.

Five seconds to a mile – that must be nearly overhead!  There is another flash directly above them, and another deafening crash.  Above the Stones, and the Mercedes, whose solid German engineering now seems terribly fragile, a whirlpool of light is forming, made up of flickers of actinic blue which run up and down the fringes of the clouds which are now circling immediately overhead.  There is another mighty roar from above and fingers of violet brilliance leap across the gap in the clouds.

Around the Stones, a blue-green glow is building and sparks are beginning to jump from the top of the pillars of rock to the ground.  Mirroring the vortex of light in the sky, wavering lines of plasma spring from the earth and swirl around the bases of the Stones.  There are now two currents of energy spinning one directly above the other.  Between them lies the Subtle Knife.

The twin spirals of light spin faster and faster, the Earth-Current rotating widdershins, the Sky-Fire counter-widdershins.  A humming sound builds, initially inaudible but rising inexorably in volume and pitch until it threatens to drown out the banshee wail of the wind.

The humans in the car cower in its seats as it shakes violently from side to side.  This is far beyond anything in any of their experiences – even Will's, and he has seen war in heaven.  He holds Lizzie close, covering her eyes and taking occasional glances at the inferno outside.  Only occasionally, for the two spinning discs of light are now so dazzling that they outshine the noontide sun.

There is a pause – they are in the eye of the cosmic hurricane.  Then a bolt of fire leaps from the earth to the firmament, fanning out in great spokes of dazzling brilliance across the wide sky to the far horizon.  Like lightning – except that this strike does not stop.  It goes on for ever and ever.  Such a column of fire led the lost tribes of Moses through the desert, turned Lot's wife to a pillar of salt and made shadows of the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It goes on for ever and ever.  And then, shockingly, it stops, and the skies above and the earth below are dark and cold.  Will and Lizzie lift their eyes from the seat cushions where they have hidden them to save their sight.  Henry Latrom and Greaves remove their hands from their faces.  They sit battered and stunned for several minutes.

Will does not need to be told what to do.  He opens the door of the car, and steps out into the calm cold darkness.  Stumbling over the uneven ground, still half-blinded, he fumbles his way to the centre of the stone circle.  There he finds the Knife, with tendrils of blue fire still running up and down its handle.

It is new-made, pristine.  The blade, flawless, with the ineffable beauty which he first saw on the summit of the Torre Degli Angeli in the haunted city of Cittagazze.  All the ugliness which resulted from Iorek Byrnison's improvised smith-work is gone; it is slender and keen, shining silver-grey, emblazoned with the images of angels.

Will Parry lifts the Knife high above his head so that the humans in the Mercedes may see it gleam with its own internal radiance.  Then, with a cry of triumph – at last! – he reaches forward to cut a window to the world where dwells his love.  He probes with its infinitely sharp point for the opening between Lyra's world and his own.

And nothing happens.


	14. Will, Lizzie, Henry and Kirjava; at Ston...

_At Stonehenge_

Will prods at the air with the Knife.  It has been two years since he last held it, so it is no surprise to him that his first attempt at using it should fail.  He just needs to concentrate his mind at the tip, feel it slide between the dimensions, and watch for the right point at which to cut through the warp and weft of space-time.

Now – forward with the blade.  Slide it from side to side, looking for the gap in space.  Yes… no.

Will is determined to succeed.  He probes again and again, without success. He cannot feel the _snick_ which tells him that the point of the knife has engaged with the fabric of the universe.

He changes his position.  Perhaps he is oriented wrongly, or the energies which have blasted the air around the Stones have distorted the underlying structure of space.

He moves, again, and again.  He tries, with increasing desperation, to cut a window to Lyra's world.  And as he fails, again and again, a terrible suspicion creeps over him, crawling into his consciousness like a reptile.  Something – or someone – is obstructing him.

'Kirjava!  Is this you?'  A dark shape appears nearby.

Will, I have told you repeatedly that what you are trying to do is wrong.  If you would only stop and think, you would see it too.

'Are you stopping me from using the Knife?'

I must stop you.  I know what these people are like.  Kirjava tells Will everything that she has learned, in The Grove and elsewhere.

Henry Latrom… he is not a good man.  He runs an evil trade, in people, and in the things that destroy people's bodies and their souls.

'Kirjava, listen to me.  You've got to.  _The angels got it wrong_.  Can't you see that?  They left all these people stuck in the wrong worlds.  Lots of innocent people are going to die if we don't help them.'

You… we… made a promise.  That promise was absolute.  It wasn't a promise we could take back just because it didn't suit us to keep it any more.  We would stay in our own world.  We would not waste our lives looking for windows to Lyra's world.  We would break the Knife, because using it causes great harm.  And, in return, Xaphania promised us that we could, if we really tried as hard as we could, learn to use the angels' way of travel between the worlds; by imagination.

'Oh, that!'

Yes, that.  We haven't tried it, have we?

'It's all bollocks.'

How do you know?  You've never tried it.  And you won't, not while you still have the Knife.  That is what it's done to you.  And to me, too. 

'So you won't let me use it.'

No, I won't, because I know what would happen if I did.  You might say that you were only using the Knife to help people, and you might even believe it yourself, for a while.  It wouldn't stop there – I know it.  So do you.

Will looks around himself in despair.  He is tempted to throw the Knife away, as far as possible, but then he glances at it again, and it is so deadly and so beautiful that he knows that he cannot bear ever to be parted from it.

He walks slowly back to the Mercedes, where Henry and Lizzie are waiting for him.  He opens the back door.

'It's no good.  I can't use it.  My daemon won't let me.  I made a promise, you see.'

_In the Mercedes_

Will slumps into the back seat of the Mercedes and looks out of the window, unable to face Lizzie or Henry.  Lizzie gasps 'Your daemon?'

'Her name is Kirjava.  She's cat-formed.'  Kirjava reveals herself at last to Lizzie, who realises now that she has seen her before, in the shadows, out of the corner of her eye.  She clutches her serpent-daemon, Parander.

'I see.'  Henry is grey-faced.  This is what he had feared – that the boy might have lost the ability to use the Knife. Will's motivation was never in doubt, of course, but the revelation that he has a fully-formed daemon who is acting against them is a grievous blow.  The mongoose-daemon Tiki climbs from Henry's coat pocket and wraps herself around his neck.  She feels very light; as light as a feather, you might say.  He knows that his death is very close to him now, and the loss of all that he has achieved.

Henry has one card left to play.  He turns round in the front seat of the Mercedes and addresses Will, Lizzie, Kirjava and Parander with a dying man's intensity.

'Elizabeth, I'm going to tell you something now that my brother Charles, had he lived, would have told you on your twenty-first birthday.  It's a very private thing, but I want Will and Kirjava to hear it too.  You will understand why, I'm sure.'  Henry is gasping for breath, and Lizzie silently hands him two more tablets from the brown bottle.

'As you know, my brother adopted you, from an orphanage…'

'Are you going to tell me who my real parents were?  Are you telling me this now because we're going to die soon?'  Lizzie is wild-eyed.

'Yes, I am.  And no, I do not think that we are going to die.  Please don't interrupt me again.

'It is true that you were adopted from an orphanage.  However, you were never a resident of that orphanage.  You were there for half-an-hour only, for legal and practical reasons.  Such arrangements are not uncommon.  You entered the orphanage by the back door, and left by the front door shortly afterwards.

'Perhaps you can guess what I am going to tell you?  As you know, my brother, Charles Latrom, never married.  When he was in his late thirties he met a woman – an adventuress – and conducted a liaison with her.  Perhaps he meant it to be a brief fling, perhaps not.  The woman expected – and gained – great personal advantage from the _affaire_.  But; there was a child, born out of wedlock.  The only way that he could claim the child as his own, and avoid social censure, was to adopt her, which he did by the expedient I have already described. That child, of course, was you.'

'So – he was my real father all the time!'

'Can you doubt it?'

'No.' Lizzie is flushed with excitement. ' No, he was a good father to me.  He never told me everything about himself, but I never asked.  I wish I'd talked to him more…  But what about my mother?'

'As I say, she was an adventuress.  She was ambitious and intent on personal advancement, and she achieved it, too.  She was very intelligent, and very beautiful, and Charles could not get her out of his system.  She used him shamelessly, for she was a woman of, let us say, _flexible_ morality and entirely without scruples.'

Henry, like many successful men, has absolutely no sense of irony.

'She was married a few years later, to an unexceptional man, but she also had another _affaire_ with an influential figure in the King's Party, and had a child by him.  One day the two men met, and there was a fight, and one of them was killed.

'It's strange – she was just as unable to resist her new lover as poor Charles was to resist her.  In the end, she killed Charles, I'm sure, and she may well have killed her lover too.  No one knows, for both she and Lord Asriel disappeared without trace two years ago.'

Will has been following Henry Latrom's account with fierce concentration.  The implications of what Henry has been saying are hammering at his brain.  He looks again at Lizzie's face, with new insight.  How could he not have known?  How could he not have realised?

'Kirjava!  Now what do you say?'

There is a long pause, while time hangs suspended.  Then Kirjava speaks, and this time they can all hear her voice.

'Lizzie's mother was the woman Marisa Coulter.  Lizzie is Lyra's half-sister.

'Will, use the Knife.  For Lyra's and Pantalaimon's sake, I will not prevent it.'

Henry falls back against the seat, exhausted, dying.  Greaves, who has sat impassively through all that has happened – the perfect servant – reaches across the car to support him.  Lizzie, only partially understanding what has happened and dazed by the impact of her new knowledge, stares open-mouthed at Will and Kirjava.

Will opens the door and steps out of the car.  He holds the knife with new confidence.  His consciousness flows smoothly along its glittering silver blade and concentrates itself at the point.  This time, Kirjava and he are working in unison.  This time, they will not fail.  He reaches forward to cut a window to Lyra's world.

And nothing happens.


	15. Will, Lizzie, Henry, Giancarlo and Remie...

_At Stonehenge_

Nothing happens…

'No!  No!  NO!  Please, please work – you've got to!'  Will cannot comprehend what is happening.  He concentrates as hard as he can on the blade, the tip, the interstices of space, the gaps between the worlds.  And still the Knife in his hand cuts nothing but the empty air, lethally sharp but impotent.

He is flailing now, out of control.  He runs away from the car where Henry, Lizzie and Greaves can see all too clearly that something is desperately wrong.  Greaves takes out his mobile phone and calls The Grove.  His voice is low and urgent.

It is fortunate that the land around Stonehenge is flat and the roads are not busy.  Will runs blindly away from the Stones and across the road to the visitor centre, not waiting for the traffic.  He blunders his way into the car park and crashes into a wire fence; stops and catches his breath.  He throws down the Knife in frustration and disgust.

'Kir!  It's hopeless!  It's all gone!'

Pick it up, Will.  Try again.

Will takes the Knife.  Half-heartedly he searches one last time for a fault-line in space.  He knows that he will not find one, and he is right.  He slumps down against the fence.  It is cold, and the ground is hard.

Now he knows how Lyra felt, in the world of the Mulefa, when she lost the use of the alethiometer.  Grace has fallen from him, as it fell from her, and he is left utterly forlorn.  He remembers Lyra's poor bewildered face as she realised what had happened to her, and the tears spring to his eyes.  Now he knows how it was for her, and the knowledge is ashes and bitter aloes in his mouth.

He realises that he must soon return to the Mercedes and tell Lizzie and Henry that their death sentence is sealed, but not yet.  Not yet.  He cannot yet bring himself to confess his failure to them and see the despair in their faces.  Especially in Lizzie's face, which now more than ever reminds him of his lost Lyra.

The headlights of the passing cars periodically illuminate the empty visitor centre and recede down the road.  Otherwise, the car park is quiet and deserted.  Will's eyes are downcast and half-closed in misery, so that he does not see the two figures who approach across the tarmac.

Will!

It must be Lizzie or Greaves, come to find him.  He looks up.

There is a small boy with dark curly hair, no more than nine or ten years old.  Behind him… a man-shape, glowing golden in the darkness surrounding them.

'Excuse me.  Are you Will Parry?'  The boy has a slight foreign accent, mixed with the clipped accents of London.

'Yes.  Who are you?'

A voice emanates from the golden aura behind the boy.  It is both near and distant, loud and soft, real and imaginary.  'I am the angel Remiel.  This boy is Giancarlo Bellini.  Will Parry, there is much that we must talk about.'

_In the Mercedes_

Lizzie and Henry wait anxiously in the car.  They believe that their hopes have foundered.  Will would not have run away as he did if he had been able or willing to use the Knife to save them.  Either he has decided to use it only for himself, or he has lost altogether the ability to cut windows between the worlds.  Greaves is speaking into his phone, urging the ambulance that has been sent by The Grove to hurry, to break whatever laws it needs to break, but to hurry.  Henry is breathing shallowly.  Both he and Greaves know the meaning of the rattle in his throat.

There is a knocking on the window of the car.  Greaves presses the button that winds down the glass.  'Let us in!'  It is Will, and Lizzie opens the door for him.  Behind him there is a glow, which she thinks at first must be lights from the road.

She is astonished when a small boy pushes past Will and into the car next to her.  'Lizzie, this is Giancarlo.  He is going to help us.'

'Help us?  How?'

'Listen.  Listen to what the angel has to say.'

Lizzie does not understand what can be happening to them, but her uncle's croaking voice comes from the front of the car.  'Elizabeth, listen.  This is our only chance.'

The angel speaks.  'Elizabeth and Henry, hear me.

'I must start by saying that I am sorry.  Sorry for the distress that you, and all the other Exiles, have suffered.  Sorry that it has taken so long – two years – for us to mend our mistake.

'For mistake it was; to close the windows between the worlds and leave you stranded; you and all the thousands of others who found themselves marooned as you were, with no hope of ever returning home.  Will has told you of the promise he made to my sister Xaphania that he would not use the Knife.  That promise he has kept, although it was hard for him to do and he would not have been able to do so without the help, knowingly or unknowingly given, of others, such as Mary Malone.

'For two years we argued; we angels.  Some said that the loss of life was worthwhile, so that the principle of the wholeness of the Universe might be preserved.  Others argued that we had no right to sacrifice living creatures to a principle, however good that principle might be, and they cited the great wrongs done by principled men and women over the ages; in the name of faith, or ideology, or the common good.

'That view – my view – eventually prevailed.  But having agreed that we would do what was needed, we had to accomplish two more things before it could be achieved.

'Firstly, we either had to restore the Knife, or see to it that the Knife was restored.  That has been done.

'Secondly, we needed to find a new Knife-bearer.'

Will interrupts. 'You see, when I broke the Knife for the second time, outside the Botanic Garden in Oxford; it was a kind of divorce, if you see what I mean.  I rejected the Knife, and it rejected me in return.  Even if I could have mended it myself, I couldn't have used it, as I found out tonight.'

The angel resumes.

'Giancarlo here is a special child.  Not unique, but special.  His mother, who died when he was two years old, was a woman of this world, but his father was born in another.  Giovanni is lying in his bed at home now, and he is dying, but Giancarlo is perfectly well because he is native both to this world and his father's.

'He will be the new Knife-bearer.  It has already recognised him.  Will, if you please.'

Will and Giancarlo step out of the car. 'Now listen, Giancarlo,' says Will.  'There are three important things that you must learn.  They are the laws which every Knife-bearer must obey.  Some of them didn't obey them and a lot of harm came from it.  Do you understand?'

Giancarlo nods.

'The first law is this: use the Knife only when you have to.  Do not use it lightly, or just for fun, for it is a dangerous tool.

'The second law is to open a window for the shortest time possible.  An open window causes great damage to the life of the Universe.

'And the third law is the most important one: _never leave a window open_.  When its job is done, close it.  I will show you how.

'Now, let's open a window to Lizzie's world.'

Together Will and Giancarlo hold the Knife, Will's hand over the young boy's.  He guides it through the air, searching for and – _snick!_ – finding the node that leads to Lyra's world.  Gently, they slide the point into the gap and slice space open around it, creating a window into the darkness beyond that is easily wide enough to allow the old man and his niece to pass through.  Remiel flickers out of sight for a fraction of a second.  'A Spectre was created in a nearby world.  I have destroyed it,' the angel says.  'It is my charge to follow you everywhere you go and make sure that as little harm as possible is done when you use the Knife.  Now, go!'

Lizzie turns to her uncle – 'Come on, Uncle Henry, we're going home!' – but it is too late, for Henry Latrom is dead.

The ambulance arrives five minutes later.  Giancarlo has closed the window as Will showed him, and Lizzie is weeping over her uncle's body.


	16. In the worlds

_In The Grove, near Alton, Hants_

The Mercedes and the ambulance arrive at The Grove together.  Greaves stops at the front of the house, while the ambulance goes around to the back, where Lizzie accompanies her uncle's body through the double doors which lead to the private rooms.

Will, Kirjava and Giancarlo leave the Mercedes and enter though the front doors of The Grove.   Mary and Will's mother are sitting together in the conservatory at the back of the house.  'It's all right.  It's all going to be all right!'  Will tells them.

He explains to Mary how it is that his terrible burden has passed from him forever, and that the cause of their disagreement is behind them now; and to his mother that they can all go home very soon.  'I thought that it would be awful, giving up the Knife, but it's not as bad as I thought it would be.  Giancarlo must be the Knife-bearer now,' he says, and the young boy smiles, but says little.  He is anxious to return to his father.

'Well, that's good!' says Elaine Parry brightly. 'You'll both be needing to get back to school!'

Later, Lizzie joins them.  Mary, who did not see her earlier, is startled by her resemblance to Lyra and turns to Will.

'No,' says Will in answer to her unspoken question, 'but I know what you're thinking.  I once thought the same.'  He explains Lizzie's rôle in all that has happened.

'It's funny,' he says.  'I always thought that if the Knife was mended I'd just jump through a window and go straight to Lyra and… and all that.  But now – somehow it's different.  I still want to see her again, more than anything in all the world, but I know I mustn't.  There's Mum, for a start.  I can't leave her alone again.'  He smiles at Elaine Parry who has been listening avidly, but without comprehension, to all that has been said.  'And… Remiel reminded me that I made a promise and…' The others look away while Will composes himself.  'We made a promise, Kirjava and me, and we're going to keep it.  Saying goodbye to Lyra was the hardest thing I've ever done.  I couldn't bear having to do it again.  Neither could she.'

'William,' says Lizzie, 'Giancarlo must take me home very soon now, and I don't think that we shall see each other again.  Is there anything that I can do?  Anything that will help?'

'Yes, there is,' Will answers.  'Can I borrow a pen and some paper?'

'Let's go to the office.'  Lizzie takes him there and he sits at the desk.  He finds a pen and some sheets of headed notepaper in a drawer and starts to write furiously.  Lizzie leaves him there.

An hour later she returns.  Will is sitting in Doctor James's old chair, staring blankly at the door.  On the desk before him is a sealed envelope, addressed to _Lyra Silvertongue, Jordan College, Oxford_.

Lizzie sees the tears in the corners of Will's eyes and the trails running down his cheeks. She walks around the desk, reaches over to Will where he sits and kisses him tenderly on the lips.

'You'll make sure she gets it?'

'Of course I will.  I wouldn't miss seeing her for anything!  And William…'

'It's _Will_.  I'm called Will.'

'Sorry – Will.  I just want to say – I've never met anybody as brave as you.  I'll never forget you, as long as I live.'

Will stands up and they embrace.  'I won't forget you either.  For as long as I live.'

Presently, Giancarlo and Remiel join them.  Lizzie presses on the spine of the volume of Egyptian antiquities and the bookcase swings open, revealing the Window Room behind.  Greaves enters the office behind them, with Henry Latrom's body on a hospital trolley.  Giancarlo and Will hold the Knife and together they cut a window into Lyra's world.  It opens out onto another room, the mirror image of this one in a house which occupies the same space on the other side of the window.  Greaves wheels the trolley through, and unseen hands take it from him.  He returns and stands by the door.

'Goodbye Lizzie.'

'Goodbye, Will.'  And they kiss for the last time.

Lizzie passes through the window and Giancarlo, as Will has shown him, pinches it shut.

'Please sir,' says Giancarlo to Greaves.  'Can I go home now?'

_In St Sophia's School, Oxford_

Dame Hannah Relf and Elizabeth Boreal have an appointment with the Headmistress of St Sophia's School.  She greets them gravely and formally, as is her way, and offers them chai and pastries.  Then she sends a messenger to request Miss Belacqua's presence in her study.

'Please; can I talk to Lyra by myself?' Lizzie asks.  She is apprehensive – how should she best handle this encounter?

Dame Hannah and the Headmistress, who know why Lizzie is here, withdraw, and so it is that Lyra, knocking and entering the Headmistress's study without waiting for an answer, as is the custom at St Sophia's, finds only Lizzie waiting for her, dressed in black crape.  She is dismayed.  Who has died?

'Lyra, please don't be alarmed.  I have wonderful news for you,' Lizzie says, seeing how she has been taken aback by the sight of her mourning clothes.  'My name is Elizabeth.'  She will tell the girl her surname presently.  'Do sit with me in the window, here.  I have some very important things to tell you.'

The two girls sit in the window seat behind the Headmistress's desk.  Lizzie takes an envelope from her purse and hands it to Lyra.

There is a long, long pause while she opens it and reads and re-reads the letter, whose contents only Lyra, Will, Pantalaimon and Kirjava will ever know.

'Is this real?' she asks.

'Yes, it's real. All of it.  All of it is real.'  And as Lizzie tells her story, Lyra's eyes grow wide and her tears mingle freely with her sister's as they hold each other closely, sharing their old griefs and their new joys.

_In Crouch End_

The Mercedes halts outside Giancarlo's house and the boy stops only long enough to thank Greaves before racing through the front door and up the stairs to his father's room.

'Papa, Papa!'

'Giancarlo, you're back!'

'Papa, I want you to do something for me.  Will you, please?'

'What is it, Giancarlo?'

'Will you come into the garden with me?'

'You know I am too weak, my son.'

'Please, Papa!'

Giancarlo's eyes are shining so brightly, and his face reminds Giovanni so vividly of his lost mother's, that he cannot resist the boy's entreaty.  Leaning on Giancarlo's shoulder, he walks unsteadily down the stairs, though the kitchen door and onto the unkempt lawn at the back off the house.  It is midnight, damp and chilly, the streetlights shrouded in a misty haze.

'Giancarlo, why have you brought me here?  I will die of the cold.'

'Wait, Papa.'

Giancarlo takes the Knife from his coat and easily, confidently, cuts a window in the air.  A warm, scented breeze blows through it, enveloping the boy and his father.  Giovanni stares at his son and, blinking in disbelief, takes his hand and steps over the threshold.  A glimmering golden form extends its right hand and closes the window behind them.

Giovanni Bellini wraps his arms tightly about his son, the child of two worlds, as he looks around himself and cries out aloud for sheer delight.  In the velvet-warm night air, under the bright unwinking stars, they walk at last on the green hills of their home world of Cittagazze.  Soon, when his father is well again, Giancarlo will find the other Exiles, and take them home too.

The Subtle Knife, its blade safely wrapped in cloth, waits patiently in Giancarlo's coat pocket.  It has all the time in the worlds.

__

_"Sometimes a tool may have other uses that you don't know.  Sometimes in doing what you intend you also do what the knife intends, without knowing."_

__

_Author's note:_

Thank you for reading this far; and special thanks to those readers who followed the story as I wrote it, urging me on and waiting patiently for me to reveal what was hidden and, I hope, explain what needed to be explained.

This is not the end of the story!  It continues in THREADS, also on FF.NET.

_Ceres Wunderkind, February 2002_


	17. Afterthoughts

_Afterthoughts_

This story had its roots in three others:

_His Dark Materials_ – naturally.

_And The Walls Crumble_, by Morpherkidvb – the mention of the Knife's intentions in the story summary got me thinking.

_Lyra Goes On Holiday_, by Daisy – the last chapter, where Will contemplates taking metalwork lessons at school so he can re-forge the Subtle Knife.

I hope I've not trodden on anyone's toes with this story, and that if I have you'll forgive me.

What do I wish I'd done differently?  Oh – the story is much too short, of course.  It would have been nice to have told it more slowly.  I wish I'd taken the time to find out more about Henry and Lizzie, who are barely sketched in as characters.  I wondered about including a relationship between Greaves and the efficient Miss Morley, but the sort of thing I had in mind would have taken the story into NC-17 territory…  And what about Will's three lost weeks spent homeless in London?  

Mary Malone had little to do apart from be moved around by the plot, which is a shame.  Was it the Latrom influence that resulted in her not being able to get a decent job in Oxford?  Will she carry on working at Sainsbury's?

Did Remiel intend that Henry Latrom should die?  He certainly wasn't in any hurry to open the window at Stonehenge.

Elaine Parry got a rotten deal, as usual.  Philip Pullman's no better; that's my excuse.  One day someone's going to write her story, and do it properly.

Why doesn't Will follow Lizzie through the window to Lyra's world?  Well, for all the reasons he gives.  Plus, Giancarlo has better things to do than be a transdimensional chauffeur for Will.  But mostly, because he's English.  That's the sort of thing English people do.  Trust me. 

What happens next?  Will all the Exiles be saved?  Will Miss Morley do a good job of running The Grove, and the other parts of the Latrom empire?  What will Lizzie make of her life, and will she and Lyra be friends?  Free of the influence of the Knife, will Will start to think seriously about the uses of Imagination?  What does the future hold for Remiel and the Bellinis?  Lastly, I don't suppose I'm the first person in the world to notice how much Will Parry and Frodo Baggins have in common ;)

_Ceres Wunderkind, March 2002_


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